William Quantrill’s August 21, 1863 Confederate raid on Lawrence, Kansas, left nearly 200 men and boys dead and the city in flames. Film expert John Tibbetts explores how that dramatic story has found its way onto celluloid in movies as varied as Dark Command (1940), Quantrill’s Raiders (1958), and Ang Lee’s locally-filmed Ride With the Devil (1999).

On the 150th anniversary of William Clarke Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, Tony R. Mullis of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, examines the notorious massacre and the years of back-and-forth atrocities by Confederate bushwackers and pro-Union Jayhawkers that led up to it.

Before and during the Civil War, Confederate guerrillas battled federal troops and Jayhawker irregulars along the Missouri-Kansas border. That brutal era comes to life in Guerrillas in Our Midst, an original exhibit of drawings and photographs from the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections.

FILMS

Quantrill’s Legacy

August marks the 150th anniversary of the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, by William Quantrill’s band of Confederate irregulars. The Library observes this event with a series of films that unfold on the Missouri-Kansas border.